“When I listed all of those pies,” she said, “that was just, you know, for discussion, so we could decide which ones to order. That wasn’t me saying we had to order them all.”

Max liked how, every time Olivia laughed at something he said or did, he felt like it was hard won. Even when it was clear she was laughing at him, like right now.

“I know, but this is your first time here! Plus I want you to be able to accurately tell all of your friends back in New York how much better L.A. is—you can’t do that unless you have plenty of evidence.”

Olivia brushed her hair back from her face. One curl immediately sprung back. He wanted to lean forward and tuck it behind her ear, but stopped himself.

“That would be a waste of time. There are two kinds of people who live in New York: the ones who know L.A. is better but refuse to move, and the ones who will never acknowledge to their dying day that there’s anything good about California. Oh, well, there’s the third kind—the ones who are trying to get out. That was me for the past few years. But I never bother to have those arguments about which city is better, partly because the answer is obvious to me, but also because those arguments are pointless and make everyone mad for no reason.”

He was pretty sure she’d just insulted him again. Hardly anyone ever did that to his face these days, not even people who strenuously disagreed with him politically.

It was kind of … nice?

“I was going to ask why you moved back to California from New York, but I guess that just answered that question. How long did it take you to get back here?”

His big worry with this date tonight had been that he’d have to control the whole conversation himself. That’s what had happened the few times he’d gone out on first dates in the past two years—he didn’t know if it was because women were intimidated by him now, or because the type of women who were interested in dating a senator thought they should just shut up and let him talk, but whatever it was, those dates were boring as hell. But with Olivia, the conversation was easy; he didn’t have to think about it; he could just relax into chatting with her.

“I started really thinking about it almost three years ago—I moved to New York a year after I graduated from law school, and I loved living there, but every time I came to California, it got harder and harder to go back. I decided in earnest about a year ago. I’m sure there’s a lot I’ll miss about New York, but it feels right to be here in L.A. now.”